Leanne Wood: One of the most important vehicles for preventing homelessness is the Supporting People budget, and you will have heard from people in the sector about their concerns about losing the ring fencing of that budget. Will you now today acknowledge those concerns and agree to continue with the ring fencing, and also will you agree to ensure that there's a separate budget line for the Supporting...
Leanne Wood: Will you take an intervention?
Leanne Wood: Will you take an intervention?
Leanne Wood: Thank you very much. You've outlined the lack of social housing that's available. Can you see that one of the problems in creating that lack of social housing is the right to buy scheme, and do you oppose the right to buy scheme for that reason?
Leanne Wood: I welcome today's Plaid Cymru debate and the opportunity to contribute in it. Wales is not the richest country on earth, but we are a developed part of the western world, and in one of the largest and richest economies in the world, yet some people are forced to be homeless, and that means that, as a society, we're all failing on one of the basics. That's why we need a lot more compassion on...
Leanne Wood: You have an 85 per cent target for hospital beds and you breach that as a matter of routine, which means that patient safety is compromised. You are failing to meet that measure of patient safety, and that is unacceptable. And, First Minister, I have to say, I think you're being complacent. It's not just us; the Royal College of Emergency Medicine is also saying that NHS staffing needs to be...
Leanne Wood: First Minister, the story that you tell is of a service that's under pressure but coping well, but there's another story as well and that's being told by the media, of hospitals being 'like a battlefield' for NHS staff. Both of those stories can't be true, and I think that you know that winter preparations have not been good enough. Isn't that why we had an apology from Vaughan Gething for...
Leanne Wood: Diolch. I'm going to continue with health, First Minister. You said that winter pressures are expected every year and you're right, and you should be planning for spikes in demand as well every year. Can you honestly say that you believe that the health service has performed well over the winter in dealing with those pressures and spikes?
Leanne Wood: I've been raising the issue of CAMHS waiting lists for some time. Recently, the First Minister wrote to me explaining the reasons behind the changes in the way that these waiting lists were measured and published, explaining that some local health boards were wrongly including referrals of children and young people to local primary mental health support services in their specialist CAMHS data...
Leanne Wood: I'm just staggered to hear you say that some people are on the streets out of choice. If they are there out of choice, we're talking about a tiny, tiny number of people, and that is because there are no other options for them. Recently, the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, announced that he was strengthening the severe weather emergency protocol. Now, this means that emergency cold weather...
Leanne Wood: Well, that's a change in tone to when my colleague, Bethan Jenkins, asked a similar question to the Government, when it was said to her that priority need could be reviewed. Abolishing priority need and intentionality is one of the steps we need to take towards moving towards a housing-first approach. That's the only way that we can tackle homelessness in the long run, and in the meantime...
Leanne Wood: First Minister, I've raised the question of homelessness with you several times this year, in the hope that you would take further action. Recent plunging temperatures have given this topic a new level of importance. In October, I asked you to abolish the Pereira test, which would end priority need so that everybody who's found to be homeless is then entitled to accommodation. At that time,...
Leanne Wood: What representations has the Welsh Government made recently regarding the devolution of the criminal justice system?
Leanne Wood: Will you take an intervention? I have great sympathy for some of the arguments that you're outlining, but how can you say that when you don't want to have the powers to be able to do something about it yourself?
Leanne Wood: We might as well all go home then.
Leanne Wood: But self-determination means that they have their say, surely?
Leanne Wood: Will you take an intervention?
Leanne Wood: Do you think the Spanish state was wrong to stop the Catalans having their say?
Leanne Wood: No, they haven't.
Leanne Wood: The problem here is that we have a number of Labour views. We don't have clarity as to what the Labour position is, and there has been a failure by Labour MPs to protect our interests here in Wales, by the way that they vote. We're facing a weak and divided Tory Government, but a consensus has been allowed to be built over leaving the single market and the customs union. You've said that if a...
